The black emptiness

Space is - emptiness.

It is black because emptiness has no light of its own. It is neither cold nor hot because emptiness has no temperature. And, of course, there is no air or water in space.

But although space itself is emptiness, there are things in it. There are billions and billions of stars. There are huge clouds of gas and dust. Comets and chunks of rock called meteoroids rush through parts of space. Waves of light from stars travel through it. Tiny, invisible particles move about. Space is the emptiness that surrounds all these things.

Space and all the things in it make up what we call the universe. We do not know how big the universe is, but the things farthest away that we know about are very far away. The light they give off takes thousands of millions of years to reach us ! Perhaps the universe stretches away in all directions, forever - and never ends !